" The Jews crucified Christ." That is pure ignorance....

"The Jews crucified Christ." That is pure ignorance....

People who talk about a list of Jewish sins against Christendom reads like a bill of Inquisition. I realize this is not a subject for archeology and biblical scholarship, but I happen to be pretty informed about the political climate in Judea during the Roman Occupation that resulted in the Jewish Wars. There were four national parties at the time -- the Pharisee and Sadducee alternated in power, maintaining control over the Temple and the priesthood while the Essenes and the Zealots had formed a loose alliance to unseat them. To say "the Jews crucified Christ" is just wrong. It was about national party religio-politics, control of the Temple, the attempted ouster of the corrupt Harod family (Herod was not even Jewish; he was Indominian from the south) and the Pharisee and Sadducee sell out to Rome for personal gain -- a thing which, according to the Habakkuk Pesher used as prophesy during the Messianic Movement, resulted in the entire land and nation becoming impure -- "Toevan" -Temple, Land and People.

Jesus refused to play up to the Zealot expectation of a military messiah and believed they had a better chance of converting Rome through multi-generational evangelicalism among the Gentiles and the Diaspora in the Empire, rather than by military conquest, which was suicidal as events at Massada proved. It was the Zealots who betrayed him to the Sanhedrin as the Essene "king" (Davidic Messiah; John being the Aaron Messiah) who would threatened their power. On top of that, after Harod eliminated John, the Aaron Messiah of the Essenes, Jesus combined both roles and proclaimed himself the king-high priest of the Order of Melchizedek (the priest king who welcomed David to Jerusalem). The Essene-Zealot alliance threatened the very Pharisaic/Sadducee establishment that was becoming wealthy via its coziness with the Roman procurator, provincial governor and, or course, Roman appointed tetrchs, divided among Harod the Greats sons. It meant revolution and the Zealots fully expected their "messiah." Instead, they got someone they surely thought was a Roman collaborator, talking about evangelism and a "kingdom not of this world."

In fact, Jesus was far too spiritual than the conquering king the Zealots expected to lead their insurrection. With this mixture approaching civil war, and the Zealots selling out their disappointing messiah, both the Sanhedrin and the Roman governors got what the wanted -- they thought they had the "king of the Jews" in charge of the Zealot uprising and the Zealots went underground again under the leadership of Simon Magus, Barabbas, Judas and Simon the Galilean.

Much of this comes from Josephus', "The Jewish Wars." Other bits from the Qumran Scholars. Please don't drag the old Christian canards against the Jews into this. That whole schism was fomented when Nero began the persecutions. He saw no difference in Zealot, Christian or their Gentile Christian converts. They were all insurgents in his mind so the Christian faction quickly distanced themselves from the Zealots of Judea. After all, their whole outreach was to control the Diaspora and thereby challenge the Judaic establishment posing the synagogues ("churches") of the Diaspora against the corrupt Temple establishment. Still, the Jewish leaders among the Diaspora Christian Party were executed when they could be discovered. Most went underground leaving the new party to the Gentile converts. So you have a dichotomy that was driven by the instinct for survival. But doesn't have "the Jews crucified Christ." That is pure ignorance....